Menu

Camino Aragones

You’d think an historic pilgrimage route wouldn’t need a recently-updated guidebook. And, for much of the Camino Aragones, that assumption is reasonably correct. However, on what became my last day on that route, I learned that older guidebooks only work with a healthy dose of flexibility.

After getting lost leaving Tiebas, I planned to recycle my guidebook as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I’d used the book to make plans for the day before setting off that morning. I intended to spend the night in the albergue it mentioned near La iglesia de Santa Maria de Eunate, an incredibly beautiful Romanesque church standing alone in a field. Even to my agnostic sensibilities, the church felt undeniably special and sacred; I found myself deeply absorbed in the act of sitting – and then singing – inside it.

La iglesia de Santa Maria de Eunate

But, there was no longer an albergue nearby, so it was onward to Obanos.

When I arrived in Obanos, the town was fully involved in a celebration. A band was playing in the bandstand, people (some of whom were dressed to the nines) danced in the streets, and food stands were set up around the central plaza, near carved wooden statues. While I enjoyed wandering around and enjoying these eye-level statues, larger-than-life replicas of religious figures were unloaded in the town. After I’d explored for a while, I headed to the albergue to drop off my bag and eat some dinner.

Big surprise: It was closed.

By this point, after little shuteye the night before and some 37 kilometers of walking and getting lost, I was very ready to lie down. Instead, I got what Quiver once called “morale on a plate” (some patatas fritas), shouldered my pack, and headed onward once more.

While I’d intended on sleeping on the quiet Camino Aragones rather than the Camino Frances, the bustling route most people simply know as the “Camino,” I now had no choice: The next town was Puente la Reina, an important destination on pilgrimages of ages past and today, a town where several routes converge into one Camino bound for Santiago.

And, that’s why at 7:20, 13 hours after I’d set off from Izco that morning and a solid five hours after most pilgrims had finished their day’s walk, I shuffled into Puente la Reina, a little road weary, a little footsore, and a little wide eyed as I took in the town, which was overflowing with pilgrims. As walkers had for centuries before me, I had arrived.

One big problem I faced on the Camino Aragones was my tendency to get lost. It wasn’t that the path was tough to find; in fact, it was well marked. It was just that, at times, it — and the Chemin d’Arles, for that matter — was a “choose your own adventure” type of trail. I had a tendency to choose the path less traveled (and highly recommended by my less-than-useful guidebook) and end up wandering around in some field. Such was the case on my last day of the Camino Aragones.

After a sleepless night in the albergue of Izco, where the entire 30-person town seemed to be up until the wee hours of the morning very loudly celebrating an occasion that those of us not from the town knew nothing about, I woke up early and attempted to hit the trail just as the other pilgrims were waking up. One problem: The albergue’s door had been closed from the outside and was nearly shuttered up by a metal overhead door. The door hadn’t been pulled to the ground, so — at the encouragement of the Spanish pilgrims — I slid under the door and out into the cool morning air.

The night had been stormy, and the morning was filled with the dramatic light of a cloudy sky. The wind whipped around me, and I zipped up my fleece to my chin. Walking down the gravel track, I enjoyed watching the sun slowly climb through the clouds, creating a spectacular and ever-changing array of colors, light, and shadows. I wished I had some wool with me; I’d have done some plein airfelting!

As the day went on, I found that I seemed to arrive in sleepy hamlets just as the church bells were ringing, marking either the hour or the half-hour. In the United States, it’s my experience that there are usually at least 10 miles separating adjacent towns. In northern Spain, it wasn’t unusual to find villages just a kilometer or two apart, with farmland in between. Each named village generally had its own place of worship, and each village was laid out in its own way. It astonished me that more of the villages hadn’t grown and melted into one another in the centuries since their establishment.

In the afternoon, I walked into Tiebas, a tiny town that looked as though it would be bustling, if I hadn’t arrived during siesta. Instead, I found almost-eerily vacant streets under a sky still threatening more rain. The only person I saw in Tiebas was driving a big white van around and around the town. The van had a megaphone on its roof and was blaring on loop a message for women; whether the message was political or commercial or something else entirely was beyond my comprehension.

Because of the praise the guidebook extolled on a route to Eneriz, I decided to follow its advice and leave the Camino. I exited the town under an overpass, where warnings about “zoombies” had been graffitied. I walked along railroad tracks, heading toward the factory that I was supposed to pass before finding myself in farm country. Next to the factory was an overgrown field, beyond which, it appeared to my nearsighted eyes, people were walking on a quiet road. Certain that the road must be the one mentioned in the guide, I began traversing the edge of the field to get to it.

Fifteen minutes later, all I had found were two shoefulls of grass awls and a bit of frustration. Perhaps, in the land of Don Quixote, I had seen some mirages of my own.

An hour after I’d begun my detour, I checked myself for ticks at the railroad tracks, passed the “zoombies” warning again, and headed back to Tiebas, prepared to discard my guidebook at the next recycling bin I came to.

The second portion of my dabbler of Caminos, the Camino Aragones extends from the Col du Somport in the Pyrenees to Puente la Reina, an important stop along the Camino Frances. The approximately 170-kilometer Camino Aragones traverses the river valley of the Rio Aragones on the hot, dry side of the Pyrenees. The Camino Aragones is often chosen by pilgrims wishing to avoid the “traffic” of the Camino Frances; while that may have figured into my choice, the opportunity to cross the mountains at Somport Pass was what pulled my heartstrings.

Some of my favorite portions (and, to be honest, the favorites of most hikers) of the Appalachian Trail are those miles in the southern balds and the northern alpine zones: times when we’re above treeline, wind-whipped, sunburned, and undeniably tiny in an enormous landscape. Similarly, when I left behind the beautiful woods of the Pyrenees National Park (Le Parc national des Pyrénées) and found myself in high meadows just under the pass, I was awestruck. Simply gorgeous.

Walking along the road to enter Spain felt climatic, and mountain panoramas made it tough to make forward progress. But, the air was chilly and the path beckoned, so, eventually, I began the decent. (Conversational blue blaze: Some American websites bemoan the descent from Somport Pass. If your knees tend to get achy, you’ll hurt, but it is nothing like the descent from San Jacinto!) As I descended, the air kept getting hotter and dryer, and the plant life around me changed. This aridity would be my reality for the length of the Aragones.

Stacked square bales

Farmland stretching toward the horizon

Hilltop village

The Aragones was dry and hot and barren – but still dramatic and beautiful. For the first time ever on trail, I carried body lotion because, before it adjusted to the climate, my skin was so dry that it hurt. For the length of the Aragones, I found myself eager to hit the trail early in the morning to make some miles before the sun was high in the sky. Often, I still walked until late in the day, but I did make sure that I rested in occasional shady patches.

It seems that articles about the Camino Aragones rarely draw attention to its variety. The “lunar landscapes” of the Camino Aragones – the badlands left behind by the river – are bizarre and unusual. The path passes through much farmland and some low-precipitation forests. It passes a couple of large water bodies – the Rio Aragones and a giant blue reservoir. It descends from the Pyrenees, keeping them in view for a while. It climbs up to high moorland. It passes through tiny villages and bustling Jaca.

While I’d approached Jaca with the standard amount of apprehension I give developed areas, I found myself unable to find anything disagreeable with the the beautiful, historic city. Like Toulouse, Jaca felt special (and distinctly European). I was glad to call it my home base for two nights, as I took a zero day to visit San Juan de la Pena.

It took a day or two for the Aragones to win my heart. For a brief time, I’d considered skipping ahead, discouraged from walking by some miles of trail near traffic. Then, the route began winding along gravel farm tracks and up and over small hills near stone ruins, the skeletons of farms from former centuries. I found myself fascinated by the juxtapositions of new technologies (from tractors to wind turbines) and these relics.

As I walked the Camino Aragones, I found my stride on this medieval route. I came to not just accept but appreciate the social time of the albergues at night and the community of pilgrims on the trail. There weren’t many of us yet – perhaps just half a dozen or so – and I knew more awaited in Puente la Reina. As we sought refuge from a thunderstorm together in Izco, rehashing our journeys thus far, I thought about our diverse community, united by a common destination. I began wearing my shell more proudly.

In celebration of the wonderful time I had on the Camino Aragones, I needlefelted one of my favorite photographs from that section of my walk across Spain. I’d taken the photo midway through the Aragones, as I enjoyed a last view of the snowcapped Pyrenees rising above arid grain fields. Felting from photographs is my favorite kind of felt painting; I try to capture the details and mood of a photo by using a special needle to poke strands of dyed wool into place on a “canvas” of wool I’ve made from our pet sheep’s last haircut. It always takes a while to get a wool painting just right, but the result has lots of color and texture. I’m quite pleased with this “painting.” (If it strikes your fancy, here’s a shameless plug: Please feel free to check it out on the Etsy shop of our family’s fiber studio: https://www.etsy.com/shop/heartfeltfleecefiber.)

Anyway, the Camino Aragones was the second route I came to in my dabbler of Caminos. Almost from the moment the Camino began descending the Pyrenees at the France-Spain border, it took on a different flavor. The misty, muddy path gave way, on the other side of the rain-shadowed mountains, to a drier, hotter trail. The wildflowers were different, and the forests of the French side disappeared. The first few towns on the Aragones seemed more bustling than the sleepy French mountain villages I’d gotten used to.

But, as the PCT taught me, arid lands have a distinct beauty of their own, and I soon found myself appreciating the brushlands of eastern Spain. Unlike on the PCT, water carries weren’t an issue, as it was easy to ask a kind baker or bartender for water in the towns along the way.

A sundog above the trees

By the time I arrived in Jaca, the Spanish sun had already begun working a number on my skin, and I’d been lucky to be a witness to a spectacular sundog, a rainbow-like phenomenon seen on sunny days. I hadn’t yet glimpsed the “lunar landscapes,” the badlands for which that region of Spain is known, and I was excited to think that they were just around the corner. But first, it was time for a zero day — and a field trip to the cliffside monastery, San Juan de la Peña.